I first came across Albert Camus at school when I was studying for A Level French. His novel L’Etranger was on the course. Translators have struggled a bit with that title having a go at ‘The Stranger’, ‘The Foreigner’ or ‘The Outsider.’ It is the latter that has generally won the day and certainly suits the main character in the novel very well.
The French Assistant who guided my reading informed me that L’Etranger was an example of ‘existentialist’ writing of which Camus was one of the main proponents. I won’t go into existentialism. You can google it. Suffice it to say I was sucked in and became particularly interested in Camus. I think the pictures I saw of him helped. Quiffed hair, coat collar turned up, cigarette at the corner of his mouth, enigmatic smile - he looked really cool. And he liked football. He had played in goal for his local junior team Algiers Racing University whose colours were blue and white. So when he went to Paris to work as a journalist it was natural that he should support Racing Club de Paris who played in the same colours. Not long after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature he was interviewed while watching Racing Club play Monaco. Not entirely inappropriate since he later said that along with the theatre the football pitch had been one of his two ‘real universities’.
So what’s not to like about Camus?
I suppose it was inevitable that in these Covid-19 days I should turn to his novel La Peste or The Plague. It concerns an Algerian town called Oran which is gradually overtaken by bubonic plague until it has to be completely locked down. The real heart of the novel contains the responses of various characters to this unexpected challenge. We see the best and the worst of humanity: the doctors and medical teams on the front line; the authorities having to make decisions; the men and women developing their own coping strategies; the opportunists who seek to capitalise on the misery and don’t want the plague to end too soon.
It’s a whole different experience when you read it in our present circumstances. So many points of connection. But it has been read in different ways from its publication in 1947. It has been seen to be relevant to any community on which disaster has unexpectedly fallen. Some are in no doubt that Camus had in mind the ‘plague’ of Nazism sweeping over Europe, overtaking France and seeking to establish a moral and spiritual lockdown. To this end he gives all perspectives a voice. Father Paneloux speaks for the Church. We hear of two sermons he preaches in the course of the epidemic. In the early stages Paneloux sees this as the judgement of God but a change occurs as he becomes more involved in the suffering of the community and experiences within himself the challenge to faith. So in the second sermon, as the plague tightens its grip, he acknowledges that to believe in God is also to accept the mystery of suffering. When he himself becomes ill, possibly with the plague, he asks for a crucifix and keeps it in his grasp until the end.
It is not an unsympathetic portrayal for in the worst of times the greatest source of strength for Christians is in the cross which is the assurance of God’s presence and purpose in the midst of suffering. We may be weary of singing ‘Abide With Me’ at funerals but it should not be hard for any Christian to connect with the final verse:
‘Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes,
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
Heavens’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee:
In life and death, O Lord, abide with me.’
By God’s grace this is the prayer of every Christian as they face the final challenge, that we are conscious of the presence and the promises of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is not denied by pain or death.
